Product Description

This is a collection of 175 previously unpublished works by Bukowski. It contains yarns about his childhood in the Depression and his early literary passions, his apprentice days as a hard-drinking, starving poetic aspirant, and his later years when he looks back at fate with defiance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #587664 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

Read it if you love Bukowski
Lets face it, if you love Bukowski, you love Bukowski. Period. If you don't, well, then stick to Mickey Spilane or Mickey Mouse -- or how about Danielle Steele?

This is the man older and wiser and, yes, often less desperate than when he was a rail thin bum living the good hard life of the bottle. Still the poems are honest and fine with Buk's signiture tight, clean lines.

I'll be honest. This one sat on my shelf for a couple of years before I picked it up and read it. I was afraid it might be crap. Listen up folks: It's not. Instead it's one more volley from heaven, one more burst of life from the best poet since Whitman.

If you love Bukowski then any Buk is good Buk. If you don't love Bukowski then sit and spin,brother, sit and spin.

READ BUKOWSKI AND LIVE!

A nice, deluded look at a sad, sad world
I have never read a Bukowski book before, nor have I every really read anything like it. It is sort of hard to try to sum up this book because it is all over the place. It follows Bukowski's life through the first few sections, then sort of drifts off as he becomes more and more disolusioned with the world and his place in it. Since I have not read any of his other books, I cannot really compare, but I was impressed with what I read. I felt I connected with what he was trying to say. "Our public hell creates a private hell and there is no hell except on earth." He did seem to ramble more in the later poems, but I think this showed his confusion becoming more and more abundant. I feel that Bukowski is a very interesting character himself. He deludes himself with alcohol and writing, but he is totally aware of his delusionment and cares not to change it. Some would look at this as grim and sad, but I was just glad to see someone else who had a similar outlook on life as I do sometimes. I also enjoyed the mood of the book. While reading it, I was transported into Bukowski's head and his way of thinking. While reading, everything he said or thought seemed right. Not until later, when I pondered his ideas outside of the context of his book, did I realize I did not agree with some things that he thought. He has a strange way of manipulating through his writing, making what he is thinking seem to be the absolute truth at the time. My favorite "poem" in the book is about Bukowski encountering a man who could play an instrument very well. He saw him while in Europe to promote his own writing. When the man played, they looked at each other and Bukowski admitted the player was the better man and both knew it. This is how he thinks during much of the book. Who knows what the other man was thinking? He probably did not even notice Bukowski, but due to his feelings about the world he thought the other guy was the better man. Because of the grimmness of it, I do not believe this is a book for everyone. I think there are also things in the book that would offend alot of people and they would pass off the vulgarity as pervertish instead of realizing the truth he is trying to show. I liked this book overall because it was truthful. He did not sugar coat anything. He was just telling how he thinks it is and it left me with a feeling of trying to do that myself.

An Unconventional Thriller
It's called "bone pallace ballet" so it's not a book of poems to read to your girlfriend under a willow tree at four in the afternoon, unless of course, she's got a wicked sense of humor. This book's hilarious, but chillingly realistic accounts of city life leave the reader dazed. It's like a high without the chemicals.

He doesn't follow any modern patterns of poetry, but he reserves images for when they're necessary. We can only sense what he wants us to sense, when he wants us to feel it, see it, hear it, taste it. Bukowski takes you on a wild ride, leads you around, and in the end, you thank him for it.

And if you're a writer out there, read "The Word"! I haven't read it in a while, but I still remember certain lines, an image I could never have thought of, but he throws it in there, and it looks effortless like an acrobat, "It can't hold your cigarette for you" and then the rush of "getting it down, getting it down, getting it down." Read it, twice, you'll love it.